Manuel Pellegrini has called on his West Ham side to carry their ‘big six’ performances into matches against those around them in the table.
The Hammers manager has seen his side put in strong performances against Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham, with results against the two London rivals not quite fitting the performance.
Starting with Leicester this weekend, West Ham now have a run of games against those outside the big six, with Burnley and Huddersfield following before the next international break.
Having, in Pellegrini's eyes, continually improved on a performance level, the Hammers must now back that up with results where it matters.
"Really, when we saw the fixtures, they are all difficult, there are always good players in front," Pellegrini said.
"If you review our fixtures then in the first ten games we played eight teams in the top half, now we have teams that are similar to us.
"That doesn't guarantee you are going to beat them. Our best games we played were against Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham, Chelsea, the big teams. We must know where we need to improve and play like we did against Tottenham for 90 minutes."
Pellegrini added: "I feel that we are improving, yes. If you see the game against Tottenham, the team that deserved it, maybe made more chances to win was our tam but, we didn't. SO in the last four games, three of them, we can agree we are playing well but in in the last three games, we didn't score goals.
"Something is missing, to create more chances, you must score, but we start working defending and improving a lot, now we need to score the chances we create."
West Ham will be without Pedro Obiang once more this weekend as the midfielder makes his return from a calf injury, with Robert Snodgrass likely to fill in once again.
